Doing The Right Thing

By SYLVESTER MONROE

Not too long ago, the get-together in South Central Los Angeles would have been as difficult to imagine as a summit between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Last week 125 members of the First A.M.E. Church, the oldest and most influential black congregation in the city, traveled to a nearby mosque to worship with so-called black Muslims from the notorious Nation of Islam. The following night the Muslims reciprocated by attending a service at the church.

The purpose was not to argue about "dogma and doctrine," said A.M.E. pastor Cecil Murray, but to "ask what we can do jointly to help take our community back from drugs and crime." Such meetings, says Khallid Abdul Muhammad, special assistant to Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, "put us into a position where black people are now turning to us for leadership."

Less than a decade ago, many blacks regarded the Nation of Islam as little more than bow-tied black nationalists, peddling bean pies and hawking newspapers on street corners from Harlem to Watts. While they commanded respect for their neat appearance and abstinence from cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, the Muslims' rigid religious strictures and separatist political views kept them on the fringes of mainstream black America.

But today the Muslims have quietly established themselves as a welcome presence in black neighborhoods. They have cleaned up a drug-infested Washington apartment complex and run a model drug-treatment program on its premises. They have earned the respect and cooperation of gang members in Los Angeles and run effective anticrime patrols in New York City, Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta.

The well-disciplined Muslims are becoming role models for a generation of black youth. "The problem of confronting gang violence and drugs is the responsibility of the black male," says Joseph H. Duff, president of the Los Angeles branch of the N.A.A.C.P. "And Muslims have always been a symbol of strong black manhood." In Los Angeles more than 1,000 black men, many of them former gang members, have recently joined the Nation of Islam. One new recruit is James Johnson, 18. "They told me how we were killing ourselves and showed me what's really going on in society," says Johnson. "Minister Farrakhan has a way of getting your attention."

Farrakhan's harsh rhetoric and anti-Semitic remarks have frightened whites and obscured the impact of the Nation's work in the black community. But his firebrand approach has also won over some blacks. "He is respected in the black community for his audacity," says Howard University political science professor Ronald Walters. "Supporting Farrakhan has become a way of hitting back at the system and expressing black public opinion." Says Abdul Wazir Muhammad, minister of the Muslims' Los Angeles Mosque: "We are a barometer of the conditions and feel of the black community. If you really want to know how black people feel, then watch the Muslims."

Farrakhan's voice and the impact of his group's antidrug and anticrime work are resonating far beyond the boundaries of the Nation of Islam. Black filmmaker Spike Lee has spotlighted Farrakhan in his two most recent movies, School Daze and Do the Right Thing, and rap artists like Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane and others are now wearing the Islamic star and crescent.

And while black audiences have long been willing to support the Nation of Islam by flocking to hear Farrakhan's razor-edged speeches, many people are now becoming just as willing to stand with his followers in the streets. When repeated clashes between Muslims and Los Angeles police and sheriffs resulted in the shooting death of a 27-year-old Muslim last January, the local N.A.A.C.P. and other mainstream black organizations rallied to support the group, something that had rarely happened in the past.

Even the police are beginning to look at the Muslims in a different light. After the confrontations in January, leaders of the Nation of Islam and several black organizations met with law-enforcement brass to ease the tensions between them. As a result, the Los Angeles Police Department and county sheriffs developed training films to educate officers on the Nation of Islam. "We now have a very positive working relationship with them," says deputy chief William Rathburn, commander of the L.A.P.D.'s South Bureau.

Since the meetings began, there have been no further incidents between Muslims and the police. At the same time, gang-related crime is down nearly 17% through February in L.A.P.D.'s South Bureau. "We don't attribute all of that to the Nation of Islam," says Rathburn. "But I would not say they're not responsible for some of it." The new attitude toward the group is summed up by Jim Cleaver, a black deputy to Los Angeles county supervisor Kenneth Hahn: "I am not a borderline Muslim, and I am not about to become a Muslim," he says. "I just respect what they do."